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The idea of reincarnation is first clearly stated in the Upaniṣads, seeming to have developed as an extension of the idea, found in the Brāhmaṇas, that the power of a person’s sacrificial action might be insufficient to lead to an afterlife that did not end in another death. The Upaniṣads, perhaps due to some non-Aryan influence, saw such a death as being followed by reincarnation as a human or animal.

NonAryan influence was probably more certain in developing the idea that it was the quality of a person’s karma, or ‘action’, that determines the nature of their reincarnation in an insecure earthly form; previously, ‘karma’ had only referred to sacrificial action. Nevertheless, Brahmanism continued to see karma in largely ritual terms, and actions were judged relative to a person’s varṇa.

While the Upaniṣads were starting to move away from the sacrificial ways of thinking which permeated early Brahmanism, they were still affected by it. In Buddhism we see a decoupling of karma from its link to ritual by identifying it with the mental impulse behind an act; the ethical quality of this was the key to an action’s being good or bad, not its conformity with ritual norms (Gombrich 1988: 65–9). Even in Buddhist ritual, which is mild by comparison with brahminritual, this still holds good.